Dadgum It: A Scandurro Story

BY TIM SCANDURRO

DADGUM IT 

All football coaches have their pet phrases.  Last year’s coach used the word “freakin’” liberally in his press conferences, and its rowdier version in his locker room.  The latter made its way into the Campus Connection bookstore’s “RMFW” designer line of sweatshirts, of which your correspondent is a proud owner.  It’s in my closet right next to a “1-0” Angry Wave sweatshirt featuring the slogan popularized two coaches ago.  If the temperature dips below 80 sometime before Christmas, which feels like an open question in September here, either or both may make an appearance.

Coach Hall’s pet phrase seems to be “dadgum,” a word that he’s been passing out after our first three games like paper towels at a crawfish boil.  The first week against Duke we had multiple dadgum problems, but the most acute was the dadgum penalties and missed tackles. In Game Two the former was addressed, and the second improved on.  After that one though, we heard that “we need to make a dadgum field goal.”  Our more consistent placekicker in practice this summer, Jackson Courville, exited that game 1-3 on the year.  Enter Cooper Helmke, who blasted a 58 yarder through the uprights Saturday while losing his footing, and followed it up for good measure with a 53 yarder.  Maybe he just needed, as they say in basketball, to “see one go in.”  The great thing about your first kick being a 58 yarder is that there’s no pressure because nobody expects you to make it.  Hitting that one true made the second one easier.   Look for him to be the first man out for field goals next week.

After the Kansas State game Saturday, the new one we heard was that we need to catch the football when it hits us in the dadgum hands.  If form holds, look for a stellar effort from our wideouts against Southern Miss.

The feeling around the facility this week is that the team has been steadily growing and improving each week, but ran into a real quality opponent Saturday that made it a little hard to see.  Whether that ends up looking like an excuse or a statement of fact will play out over the course of the season.  The next few games, we hear, will be a better barometer of where we are.

A few thoughts I had watching the game against K-State in no particular order:

--their quarterback played a lot like we hoped Zeon Chriss would play this year for us.  Can you imagine?

--We have to get Destyn Hill the ball.  If they’re shading coverage his way, throw him a screen or hand him the ball on a reverse.  I recall one pass that was skipped in his direction, and another deep shot where he drew a pass interference penalty.  I also saw that on both of our touchdowns, he was downfield blocking and doing a heck of a job of it, walling off defensive backs in the end zone so that Kadin Semonza and Mo Turner could score.

--Speaking of Turner, he gave us the kind of burst and explosiveness that he hasn’t been able to showcase since the Northwestern game last year.  He ran away from people Saturday on several plays and seemed to get the corner whenever he wanted it.

--On our second drive Ollie Mitchell, our fifth receiver when CJ Lewis is healthy, went up over two defenders and hauled in a 41 yard pass.  There is deep offensive skill talent on this football team.  Find better ways to use it.

--Our quarterback is streaky.  He will get hot, make good decisions and string together plays on one series, and then lose some rhythm and decisiveness on the next.  We need him to consistently play with confidence and purpose.  Coach Hall said this was “a hard game to play quarterback in” and he was right, but we have to find an identity offensively that we can hang our hat on and it starts with him.  We won’t see another front or defense like the one we just saw, so that helps.

--Defensively, we handled our business physically on the line of scrimmage far better than we did the first two games.  But that effort was spoiled by undisciplined efforts on the edge containing their quarterback, and far too many easy throws against our zone coverages. We dictated to their offense for the first quarter and a half, and then we took dictation from that point forward when they adjusted.  Gotta get better, gotta generate some negative plays.

It feels like this coming Saturday night at home is a big game for us.  We are a solid favorite and if we have an improving football team we should be able to show that.  Then comes a much needed bye for a banged up football team and some of its young coaches.  It is imperative that we use that week to get healthier and better.  In the middle of Game 1 the whole offensive plan for the season went out the window, and we had to adapt on the fly to a different quarterback with a different skill set.  We need to use the bye week to look carefully at what we’re doing, how to design to the strengths of our football team offensively, and how to get off the field on third down on defense. 

If we can go into that off week with a 2-2 record, extra time to prepare for Army and a revitalized football team, a fifth straight date in the conference title game is still out there. 

There’s so much work to do, I know, but “Dadgum Champs” would be a nice sweatshirt to add to the collection.